The room is filled with hot, sweaty people. It’s a small room that’s overflowing with bodies and beer spills. There isn’t even a stage, the band is playing immersed in the crowd. This makes the intimacy of the moment even more passionate. People are pushing and jumping to something that no one could call music. The walls are plastered with graffiti that talks about pain and hate, large bubbled initials cover the cement ground and ceiling. The guitarist’s hand is bloodied with the backlash of broken strings and the screamers voice is coarse and continuous. The floor is pounding with the beats of the amplifiers, the air is vibrating with sound.

The four people with instruments are only a small fraction of the magic in the room. The crowd is feeding into the bands energy, the band is feeding the crowd. The music is terrible, but it isn’t about the music. It is purely about the sound. The adrenaline. The thrill of being part of something that can only work with a group. The thrill of not being alone, the thrill of having this wonderful and amazing feeling to share with others. That’s what these people live for. They live for that one fleeting moment where they aren’t everything that their parents hate about them. They are their own people here; they can forget what they did wrong and look forward to what they will do right. That’s why everyone in this room knows each other, they love each other, some of them live together, others sleep together. They buy booze, borrow money, steal sunglasses, complain about parents. All with each other.

When a new girl comes in they absorb her into the crowd, they give her a name and they make her feel wanted. They give her people to call her friends and they give her something she can say she did right. When parents drive by the room they can hear them whisper insults. “You’re never going to amount to anything”, “When you’re 18 you’re out of here.”, “You’re going to live with your father, pack your bags.” These words fall flat with the lyrics of the songs and the happiness of the moment is impossible to overcome.

These people in this room, they stick together. They have such a strong sense of friendship and kinship that braking bonds is unthinkable. Everyone knows everyone else, everybody loves everybody else. A terrible band is a terrible band, but that’s not what this room is about. This room is about the friendships that are made with sound, the lives that are thrown together with music. This room is about centering pain and hate so love and happiness can be made. Even if it’s only for a moment.